Flagship

US readies China sanctions

The US is reportedly readying sanctions against Chinese banks in an effort to pressure Beijing over its tacit support for Russia’s war in Ukraine. The moves, according to The Wall Street Journal, come with the US secretary of state due to arrive in China, part of continued high-level engagement between the two countries even as they face off over an array of issues: The US is carrying out naval drills with the Philippines in the South China Sea, where Manila has accused Beijing of expansionism. China is not standing pat, though, and has built up its own financial wherewithal, having “watched carefully as Western allies have deployed unprecedented economic statecraft against Russia,” the Atlantic Council noted in a recent report.

IEA bullish despite EV sales slump

An ongoing slump in electric vehicle sales should be temporary, the International Energy Agency said. European battery EV sales dropped 11.3% year-on-year in March, and global sales growth has also slowed. But the IEA’s annual EV report forecast that almost one in five cars on US and European roads — and one in three on Chinese ones — are expected to be electric by 2030. Manufacturers are engaged in a price war: Tesla slashed prices in China over the weekend, and rival Li Auto immediately responded, as the two fought over a tightening market. Tesla will announce its results today and is expected to report a 40% drop in operating profit off the back of the cuts, Bloomberg reported.

Argentina marks rare budget surplus

Argentina achieved a budget surplus for the first time since 2008, a feat that President Javier Milei said proved his “shock” therapy for the country’s economy was working. During his campaign last year, Milei vowed to rapidly cut state spending, using a chainsaw as a prop to show what he would do to social programs once in office. His government has since slashed pensions and subsidies aggressively, leading to a first quarter surplus of 0.4%. However Milei warned that a painful road lay ahead for the country, where more than 60% of the population lives below the poverty line. “Despite opposition from the establishment … our plan is working,” Milei said during a nationally-televised statement.

US Kyiv aid on its way soon

The US will start sending weapons to Ukraine as soon as the Senate passes a long-delayed $61 billion military aid package, perhaps as soon as today. The British prime minister also promised the UK’s largest ever military support package for Kyiv, saying Russia “would not stop at the Polish border” if Ukraine was defeated. Moscow’s troops have made steady progress in recent weeks as Ukraine runs out of ammunition, and Ukraine’s defense minister called on Europe to step up its support, saying the US decision should not make regional allies complacent: The European Commission president told Politico that, in fact, renewed US aid would “encourage Europe to further step up.”

Wars push up global military spend

Driven by growing conflicts across the world, global defense spending grew 7% to a record $2.4 trillion in 2023, the fastest annual rise since 2009. The wars in Ukraine and Gaza have driven much of the increase and reshaped defense strategies worldwide, SIPRI, a leading security think tank, said. “The past two years of war in Ukraine have fundamentally changed the security outlook … with the NATO target of 2% increasingly being seen as a baseline rather than a threshold to reach,” one of the report’s authors said. The US and China alone accounted for almost 50% of global expenditure, but for the first time in SIPRI’s 60-year history, every continent saw an increase in defense spending.

African summit urges anti-terror unity

African leaders called for more regional security cooperation during an anti-terrorism summit. The proposals — which include the creation of a military force composed of troops from several West African countries — come amid a sharp rise in terrorism across the Sahel region. According to the UN, the region has become the world’s terrorism epicenter, accounting for 50% of all deaths from terrorism globally. The summit comes as the influence of the US and France across the Sahel wanes, while Russia becomes an increasingly popular ally of autocratic countries across the region. “Africa finds itself on the front of everyone’s war,” Nigeria’s foreign minister said.

UK passes Rwanda asylum bill

The UK passed a controversial bill that will allow the government to send asylum seekers to Rwanda for processing. The bill — which had previously been deemed unlawful by the country’s Supreme Court on grounds that asylum seekers faced “a real risk of ill-treatment” in Rwanda — intends to deter would-be migrants from crossing into the UK on boats from France. The head of the UN’s refugee agency said the law created “a worrying global precedent.” The bill’s passage is a rare victory for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak who is at record lows in the polls and whose ruling Conservative Party appears headed for a wipeout in local elections next month, as well as parliamentary polls due this year.

Chinese tech’s ‘curse of 35’

Chinese white-collar workers over 35 are increasingly vulnerable to job losses, as bosses see them as unable to keep up with new trends and a punishing work schedule. Chinese law forbids discrimination on grounds of race, gender, or religion, but has no provision for age, and tech executives openly prefer youth: Both Tencent and Baidu have explicitly tried to bring in younger staff. One manager told the Financial Times that after 30, it’s harder to keep up with “the 996 schedule”: working from 9am to 9pm, six days a week. Outside tech, China’s young people struggle to find work — youth unemployment is at 15% — but within tech, the “curse of 35” is a source of anxiety for the not-quite-so-young-anymore.

Work begins on US high-speed line

Construction began on the US’ first high-speed rail line. The inaugural rail spikes were hammered into the ground along the 218-mile proposed course between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Trains are expected to start running — at 186 mph, comparable to Japan’s famous Shinkansen bullet trains — by 2028, in time for the Los Angeles Summer Olympics. Brightline, the company behind it, wants to build more tracks, linking cities which are too near for air travel but too far to conveniently drive: The LA-Vegas line should cut journey times from four to two hours. “People have been dreaming of high-speed rail in America for decades,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said. “It’s really happening this time.”

Did a wobbly Earth lead to agriculture?

The rise of agriculture around the world may have been triggered by changes to the Earth’s orbit. At least seven human populations on different continents independently established agriculture between 12,000 and 5,000 years ago, after 200,000 years of nomadic hunter-gathering. Early farmers ate less and worked more than hunter-gatherers, so the rise of agriculture is somewhat mysterious. An economist argued in a new paper that a more pronounced wobble in the Earth’s orbit, peaking 12,000 years ago, made the seasonal changes upon which the hunter-gatherer lifestyle depended less predictable, forcing them to cultivate plants and store grain to survive lean times. The paper noted that modern hunter-gatherers also become sedentary when supplies are low.

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• Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi is on an official visit to Pakistan.
• The European Parliament votes on the extension of trade liberalization measures for Ukraine.
• You Are Here, a new novel by Dave Nicholls, is published.

The number of years since George Mallory’s ill-fated attempt to climb Mount Everest. The British mountaineer may have been the first to reach the summit of the world’s tallest mountain, or may have died on the way up: His body was discovered in 1999. Mallory’s letters to his wife, Ruth, and hers to him, have been digitized and made available to the public, including four which were found on his body. His final letter to Ruth, before his final attempt on the summit, said that “It is 50 to 1 against us but we’ll have a whack yet & do ourselves proud,” while she wrote: “I am keeping quite cheerful and happy but I do miss you a lot. I think I want your companionship even more than I used to.”

A Pulitzer Prize-winning musician is spotlighting the African roots of the banjo. Rhiannon Giddens, a banjoist who grew up in North Carolina and who plays the string instrument in a song on Beyoncé’s latest album, has been “active in correcting the banjo’s narrative,” NPR reported. In a recent video series she explores how the akonting, a three-stringed instrument from West Africa, is an ancestor of the banjo, reflecting on the latter’s prominent role in Black music legacy.

• Axel Springer’s Trump years.
• Ukraine can ‘prevail’ with US support, NATO deputy says
• Why Togo’s politicians disagree over a constitutional change.